The eyes of a murderer

The novel The Eyes of a Murderer (Spanish original title: Plenilunio), written by Antonio Muñoz Molina , was published in 1997 by the Spanish publisher Alfaguara. The translation by Willi Zurbrüggen was published in 2000 by Rowohlt-Verlag, Hamburg.

content

The main character of the novel is a Spanish police inspector who is transferred from northern Spain to a small Andalusian town at his own request. He looks back at times of constant threat, apparently related to the Basque Country and ETA terrorism. His wife was mentally unable to cope with the stresses associated with her husband's job and is admitted to a psychiatric clinic in Andalusia.

It is not the first time the policeman, who is named in this novel, has stayed in this southern Spanish city. After the death of his mother (the father was a political prisoner of the Franco dictatorship), he was housed in a Jesuit boarding school in this small town in Madrid . One of his teachers there is Father Orduña, who promoted him and finally arranged for him to study law in Madrid. Contrary to the expectations and attitudes of his teacher Orduña, who belongs to a group of left-wing Christians, his former student serves himself to the dictatorship and finally joins the police force.

In the small Andalusian town, the inspector visits his former teacher when a girl is found brutally mistreated and murdered in a park on the outskirts. The priest recommends that he look for the murderer in the city and recognize him by his eyes ("the eyes are the mirror of the soul"). So the inspector goes on the search without success. The murder case received a great response in the media, so that the investigator can also be seen briefly on television. This is also seen in the north, where he is evidently not forgotten by his opponents who sought his life.

As part of his investigation, he interrogates the murdered woman's teacher, Susana Gray, among others. After completing her studies, she moved to his home country with her former husband and has a son who now lives with his father. A love relationship develops between the inspector and the teacher.

At the same time, the author introduces the perspective of the murderer, a young fishmonger whose everyday life and psyche become another topic. Some time later, the murderer kidnaps another girl and abuses her just as cruelly as the murdered Fatima. However, Paula survived. The police manage to keep the crime a secret. As expected, the perpetrator goes to the crime scene and is caught there. During the interrogation, sitting across from the inspector is a man who has no special characteristics and whose eyes do not express anything that would suggest a cruel crime.

When the police inspector is told that he can pick up his wife from the sanatorium, he separates from Susana Gray. She decides to return to Madrid and does not let the inspector hold her back. When he leaves her apartment, his killer is waiting for him on the street.

shape

The novel has the character and tension elements of a detective novel, but devotes a lot of space to the development of its staff. The authorial narrator is psychologically close to the characters, whose activities and perspectives are interwoven. Sometimes hard cuts alternate between locations or protagonists.

interpretation

The plot of the novel is set against the background of recent Spanish history. However, the Franco dictatorship and the ETA terrorism, as well as the father's political commitment, do not affect the core of the novel about a criminal investigator who has lost his emotionality in everyday professional life. Despite the new vitality gained in the relationship with Susana Gray, he does not manage to free himself from his past. He does not get a new chance, but becomes a victim of old entanglements. - The eyes are not the mirror of the soul.

source

Antonio Muñoz Molina "The eyes of a murderer", Reinbek near Hamburg 2000